Protector
by MessyJess
Summary: Brennan's security is at risk. Interdepartmental politics and Booth and Bones are in the eye of the storm.


**I wrote this forever ago, but it took me forever to construct an actual case for Booth and Brennan to solve, so finally, I thought, "Screw it," and decided to just not include any of the actual 'case.' I'm really terrible with the actual forensics and police work aspects of Bones. You might recognize bits and pieces of this story from other stories I've written. This is where they all originated from because this was my first attempt at fanfic, _evah! _Have fun.**

She wasn't an idiot. She knew how all the bureaucracy and hoop jumping of law enforcement worked. There were tiers and echelons and interdepartmental bullshit that they were trying to ram down her throat. She stood there and took it all in. Took in this tall balding man harping at her about the regulations and how things worked and that he knew what was best, and that the goddamn government wasn't going to negotiate with her, and blah, blah, blah.

Jesus, this was boring. This man could bluster and bumble as much as he could stand, she knew what she wanted, and she wasn't going to give in until she got it. Everyone in that room knew she was the only one that could help them, no one else in the nation, maybe even the world could do what she could do, well, they couldn't do it as well as she could. That's what had gotten them in this quandary in the first place. Her name had been splashed on newspapers and magazines and all that publicity had made her a target.

It was weird to think of herself as a possible terrorist target. She just loved bones, why would anyone think that she deserved to die because of that? She'd been working with bones for over a decade. Now, she was a consultant for the FBI on cases involving corpse identification and investigation. And now she was also the target of every major terrorist organization in the Middle East stuck in a room with a bunch of middle-aged men all harping on her security risks and needs and more blah, blah, blah.

She glanced to her right and saw her partner sitting there. His eyes were glazed over, well, at least she wasn't the only one suffering. This was getting boring; she needed to end this conversation.

"Look, Agent Myers, I understand that you think you know what's best for me in this situation, and thank you for your concern, but I've told you what I want and I'm not changing my mind. Either Booth is head of my security team, or there will be no security team and you can find yourself another anthropologist." She stood up to make sure she was looking directly in the man's eyes.

"Dr. Brennan, Booth is a valued member of the FBI team, as well as a valued member of the Army Rangers, but he has no jurisdiction in this case, and the Secret Service are taking over your personal safety. Even if I thought it was a good idea to place Booth as your lead security officer, I couldn't. Just ask Mr. Shalt." She turned to look into this new challenge's eyes and raised an eyebrow.

"Agent Myers is right, ma'am. We don't do interdepartmental security teams, it makes things unnecessarily complicated and there can be a lot of tension. I assure you that the team we have for you is second only to the group we have for the president, your safety is completely secure." She shook her head again. She refused to back down.

"No Booth, no me. I'm sure your team is top notch, but I don't know them. I know Booth; we've worked together for years. He is the only person in this room that I would trust with my life. In fact, he's the only person in _existence_ that I trust with my life. The service that you are asking me to provide is a service that only I can deliver. If you don't play ball with me I will walk out of this room and you can find someone else to solve all your unsolvable problems. I'm not going to argue about this anymore, I've told you what I want, so either give it to me, or get the hell out of my way." Her hands were on her hips, and she felt fabulous. Her heart was pounding from the adrenaline and she had to fight not to twitch. This was the kind of rush you couldn't get in a laboratory or a classroom. This was what she loved about working with the FBI. There was always exciting interaction, and it fascinated her. Even when her cases were boring, she always had Booth to grapple with. For four years they had fought side-by-side and occasionally toe-to-toe. This was her element, and she could already see the head of the FBI and a very powerful member of the Secret Service throwing in the towel. Goddamn she loved winning.

She spared a moment to glance down at her partner. He was trying to hide a smile, as he remained seated next to the chair she had vacated. He was enjoying this, shaking his head at her audacity and wondering at her bravery. Mr. Shalt looked down at him.

"Agent Booth, do you have any idea of what you're risking by not intervening? You have no experience with personal security. You're just an investigator." Now it was Booth's turn to stand up.

"Sir, I served as an army Ranger for years, I've fought in a war, and was a field investigator with a badge and gun for the FBI for seven years after that. If you had taken any time to review a personnel file of either Dr. Brennan or myself you wouldn't have even broached the subject of outsiders protecting my partner. Where she goes, I go, and vice versa." Agent Myers shook his head at the two partners, and gave a last ditch effort to make them see reason.

"Booth, I know that you two have been through a lot, but she doesn't listen to you any more than she's listening to us right now. Dr. Brennan, you're not known around here for your obedience. Half the time you two solve cases by arguing the answers out of each other."

"Agent Myers, if I give you an absolute guarantee that, until this case is over, I will do anything and everything that Agent Booth says in regards to my personal safety, can we drop this and get to work?"

"You're telling me you'll do _anything_ Booth tells you?" The man's eyes were wide with shock and disbelief.

"If it concerns my personal safety, yes." She was having trouble getting the words out of her mouth. Booth was staring at her, dumbfounded by a newly discovered feeling of power. She was actually going to do what he asked. He was almost giddy from the excitement of getting to boss her around for once. His superior's voice snapped him out of his reverie.

"Hand me that pad of paper, Booth." Booth reached for a pad of paper sitting on the corner of his boss' desk and handed it to him. Myers sat down at his desk and began to scribble something onto the top sheet, "Dr Brennan, I'd like that in writing, and we'll all sign it. Just so we're all on the same page, and we have total agreement amongst all parties involved. It's informal, but I don't want to push my luck by waiting for the legal eagles to get involved so I've written this out very simply. It says that Dr. Brennan will concede to Booth's orders regarding her personal safety until this case is completed, and he will have complete control over her security team until this case is completed or he gets killed. Whichever comes first. Everyone okay to sign?"

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine."

"Great. Here's a pen. You go first Dr. Brennan." One by one they all signed the slip of paper, and Myers called his assistant in and asked that she run four copies. When she came back in with the papers he handed one to each of them and gave his assistant the original to put on file. "Now that we have it in writing, it's official, and it's effective immediately. Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth are all yours Mr. Shalt. Have fun. Try not to kill each other." He sat back down in his chair and smiled. Booth started to worry at the look on his boss' face, he looked at his partner and she looked concerned too. They followed Mr. Shalt out into the hall and shut the door behind them.

Back in the car after a grueling coordination meeting with Agent Shalt and the four other Secret Service members that were now assigned to Bones, Booth rubbed a hand over his face. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw two of the agents get into a Buick and idle behind Booth and Brennan, waiting to follow them to the ends of the earth if they had to.

"Well, that was fun Bones."

"I know, I know, I'm a pain in the ass, but what would you do without me? You'd have to work with some other egghead that isn't nearly as entertaining as me, and I would have to break in a whole new agent and be bored to tears with his boring socks and mundane ties. I need you to solve this case, Booth."

"I know, Bones, but you might have been a little more diplomatic about the whole thing. The idea is to get these guys to think you're worth taking a bullet for."

"Personally I think a four man detail twenty-four hours a day is overkill." She saw him start to speak and quickly said, "But, of course, this is your area of expertise, and I swore to do whatever you say, so I'm not going to argue." She was really itching to, though. He felt a sudden rush, and he stared at her. He almost wanted her to start arguing with him, but he knew she wouldn't. He never realized how much he liked to bicker with her. For years their back and forth had driven him crazy in good and bad ways. The things that would come out of her mouth when she was really riled could make a sailor blush, and a weak man cry. Luckily he was neither a sailor nor a wimp. He knew she loved it too. She was too alive to be stuck doing research and working like a human x-ray. She thrived in the field, and she had fought tooth and nail to get there. When she had started consulting for the FBI she had no idea of the world outside her classroom and laboratory.

He had dragged her into the field on their first case partly to piss her off, and partly because he was tired of driving back to the Jeffersonian to ask her questions. He wanted to drag her out into his version of the world, and he was sure that she would be awkward and hate it, and he'd never have to deal with her nerdy condescension again. He was wrong, as he so often was about matters concerning Temperance Brennan. She seemed enthralled with the idea of serving justice, and after four years she was still with him. She took one look at his world and decided to immerse herself in it completely. And she had definitely immersed herself in his life.

He saw her nearly every day, even when they weren't working. They ate meals together, saw a few movies together, and she had met most of his family. She knew a lot about him, and he probably knew more about her than anyone else in the world. He knew she was an abandoned child with felon parents. Her mother and father went into hiding from a serious group of bank robbers, but before that her mother was a bookkeeper and her father taught science. She was on her own after they disappeared. The rest of her childhood had been rough, but she had blossomed into a very compelling woman: smart as hell, occasionally funny, and strikingly attractive.

He remembered how taken aback he had been by her when they first met. He stomped into the Medico-Legal lab looking for a Dr. T. Brennan, and he had just assumed she was a grad student assistant. She had calmly put him in his place. For the first weeks of their partnership he walked lightly, trying to understand this woman. She was a complete mystery to him. He'd never met anyone like her when he was a soldier, never seen anyone like her in the halls of the Hoover building, and growing up in Philly, he had never dreamed that women like Temperance Brennan even existed. After his initial uneasiness he fell into a pattern of bickering, eating, laughing, and learning with her that had helped foster a partnership that earned them the title of most cases solved in the history of his department.

Most of his colleagues were men, and they all appreciated Bones' more womanly aspects. He was appreciative of her physicality the first time they met, but over time his feelings had evolved from professional, to personal, and, finally, to romantic. He never said anything, though. That would be inappropriate and completely insane. They were partners, friends, and practically family. He couldn't jeopardize all that for….anything. He wouldn't do it. He'd just get over it. He looked back at her now, staring out the bulletproof window at the passing cars on the highway.

"How you doing, Bones? You're looking a little woeful over there." She faced back forward and turned her head toward him.

"I'm fine, just wondering what mess we've gotten ourselves into this time. And thinking that maybe I should have left you out of this mess. I never even considered you might not want to be head of my security team. I'm sorry." She looked so young with her sad blue eyes, big and confused.

"Hey Bones. I meant what I said up there, where you go I go and vice versa. You're stuck with me, babe." He gave her a sideways grin and put on his blinker to exit.

"Don't call me babe. And thank you." She smiled a little at him then and looked ahead of her. "Where are we going?"

"I'm hungry and one of the guys mentioned an Indian food restaurant not too far from the Mall, so I thought we'd go eat. You are hungry, right? We haven't eaten since that pit stop this morning at Denny's." He kept his eyes on the road but raised his eyebrows out, waiting for her answer. She would say okay, he knew, but he always wanted to give her a choice. If she had a choice in matters, and she chose him, he always felt better.

"Sounds good. Can I go home when we're done, or no? What's the plan?" She was turned facing him now. He could feel her eyes on his jaw. This was the part he knew she wasn't going to like, and he wanted to be able to reason it out with her, preferably out of reach of her fists.

"We'll talk about that over dinner, Bones." He looked her out of the corner of her eyes and saw her brows knit together in consternation.

"Great, that means I'm not going to like what you have to say. You're plying me with Indian food and making sure we're in a public place where I can't yell at you." He chuckled softly and hoped she wouldn't press any further. She didn't, she turned to look back out the window instead. Probably thinking through some bizarre wound pattern in her head or calculating pi to the hundredth decimal place. He used to hope that when she stared into space like that that she was thinking about him, but he knew she wasn't. If she wasn't calculating in that big brain then she was analyzing the situation at hand and planning out how much shit to give him when he broke the news she didn't want to hear. This was going to be a fun dinner.

After their drinks had arrived and they had given the waiter their orders she started in on him.

"Alright Booth, you'd better go ahead and spill. Let's get this over with." She had her chin propped up on one of her hands and was looking at him expectantly. He cleared his throat.

"Well, the good news is we're going to keep you at your own house. I sent a team over there while we were having our meeting with the SS agents and they swept for bombs, taps, and all that. They didn't find anything in your house or on the property. The bad news is you're never going to be alone again, until this case is over with anyway."

"What do you mean by that?" She was squinting at him now, her arms folded and her head twisted slightly to the side. Looking at him like he was speaking Yiddish.

"Well, I know this may seem sudden, Bones, but I think we're going to be living together for a while." He chuckled nervously. Her eyes got wide, but then she just sat back in her chair and nodded.

"Okay. If that's what you want me to do, then I will." Booth was shocked. He couldn't think of anything to say, so he just said, "Huh?" She replied, "I signed a piece of paper and swore to yield to your opinions. I'm not going to argue with you, I'm just going to trust you. I have a second bedroom and bathroom. It really shouldn't be a big deal. We're together all the time anyway. You never know, it might be fun, if we can forget about the looming threat of death."

"Well….I'm glad you're taking this so well Bones. I thought for sure you'd be a hard sell on this one. Thank you for the, uh, yielding. You're not going to be this passive about everything are you?"

"Only on matters regarding my security. If you ever leave the seat up or wet towels on the floor, however, I will be forced to ream you." She smiled pleasantly at him, a direct contradiction to her threat, and he laughed. She was right, maybe this would be fun.

It had been two weeks. Nothing had happened, which was great, but he knew that's when people started to let their guard down, and were vulnerable. They were getting closer and closer to solving the case and he knew that the responsible party was probably getting antsy and desperate. And Bones, as usual, had been right. The last two weeks had been fun. They woke up in the morning and switched off making breakfast, then drove to work, came home, and ate dinner. Sometimes they went out to dinner, sometimes they made room in their schedules for a grocery run and created their own dinner. Everything had been pleasant and easy…and incredibly frustrating.

She would walk out of her bedroom after a shower in nothing but a towel, completely unaware of how fantastic her legs are. She would fall asleep on the couch or even in her own bed with the door open, and all he wanted to do was touch her, but he couldn't. She had even bought a TV for him because she didn't have one. The second day he was there, on the way home from work she had directed him to an electronics store and bought this big stupid TV. She said she needed to catch up on normal life, but he knew she did it for him. He wanted to kiss her in the checkout line, but he didn't. Hell, he wanted to kiss her all the time, but he didn't.

It was eight o'clock, dinner was done and the dishwasher was loaded. They went into the living room to pick out a movie to watch. He watched her bend in front of the bookshelf that housed her DVD collection. Of course, her collection consisted of about twenty movies, nearly half of which were documentaries about nature or science or whatever. She looked over her shoulder at him and called out titles. They finally landed on "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof". Twenty minutes into the movie, he was beginning to see the error of that decision. Elizabeth Taylor was on the screen all tight pencil skirts and heaving bosoms, and then there was Paul Newman sweating in unbuttoned pajama tops barking about mendacity.

It was suddenly hot in the house. He shifted on the couch and ended up with his thigh pressed against her thigh. He half expected her to shift away, but she didn't. She was absorbed into the movie. He took a moment to look at her face in the glowing television light. She was something. And that mouth. Devil's candy. Heart shaped lips and the perfect shade of dusty pink. He often wondered what her lips felt like, what she tasted like. Her head turned and she looked him square in the eye and suddenly there wasn't enough air in the room.

"Booth?" From the TV came the shrieks of an annoying Southern woman about nightly refusals, but it all faded out. Her big blue eyes looked even bigger in the glow of the screen, and her lips were slightly parted and moist from her pink tongue, and without thinking he leaned in and kissed her.

She had been sitting on the couch watching Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor dance around each other, thinking that she maybe had a lot more in common with Elizabeth Taylor than she ever thought possible. She could feel him looking at her. She could always feel him looking at her. She never called him on it. Never said a word. She was afraid if she did then he might stop looking at her, and she would miss the flare of heat in her chest that his eyes on her body caused.

She wasn't an idiot, she knew that he had felt more for her than partnership for quite some time now, but what bothered her most was how much she reciprocated those feelings. She was confident he would never make a move, and neither would she. There was too much at stake, and so many things could go wrong if they ever took the chance, but she still loved to feel him watching her when he thought she didn't notice. Now he was kissing her, and her lips parted a little, and she kissed him right back and leaned back into him.

"Sorry." He drew back. "I'm really sorry. Very unprofessional of me. I'm really sorry. Really." He had drawn back from her and was now standing, slowly edging his way backwards and around the couch. "Uh, excuse me. I better check in with the units posted downstairs, it's about to be a shift change. I'll go do that. Sorry." He darted to the hall and disappeared into his room.

Temperance felt lost. What the hell? She couldn't be that bad of a kisser. Point in fact, she had had people tell her, several people, that she was good with her mouth. So, what the hell? And he was twitchy and bumbling, Booth was never twitchy or bumbling. In fact, most of the time he was annoyingly over-confident and sure. So, _what the hell_! She bit her bottom lip into her mouth and felt him there. She wanted that back. She wanted him. The floodgates had opened and she was not going to take no for an answer. She propelled herself off of the couch and followed his vapor trails into the hallway and into his room. She walked in to find him sitting on the bed, and not on his phone. She walked over to stand in front of him.

"You know, we can't keep pretending this isn't here, this thing between us."

"This is dumb," he said. "This is such a dumb thing to do."

"Nonetheless, it's here. We're here, and you kissed me, and I kissed you, and here we are. So what now? I'm no good at dancing around, and you're no good at lying, so something has to give. What's the next move?"

"You're asking me? I have no idea. This isn't exactly how I pictured this moment in my head."

"You've pictured this moment? I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised, because you're always staring, but," he cut her off. "What do you mean, 'always staring'? I don't always stare. And you stare sometimes too, not at me really, but at other things, oh, just hell."

"Well you do stare. Maybe not always, but you do stare. I stare at you too, you know? I just hide it better. Like I said, you're no good at lying."

"You stare? At me? Where am I when this is going on? There's all this staring that I'm not aware of and it seems unfair that I'm the only one feeling unrequited. I don't want to be the desperate pining guy. So, if you're pining, then you need to share in the desperation." He sounded exasperated, so she sat down next to him and put a hand on his back.

"Look, Booth. You and me, we're not like other people. Yes, I worry that romance with you will change some of those things, and so I pine. I pine discreetly and hope that one day this will all work itself out. But it hasn't worked itself out. We've hauled it out into the open and now we need to make some decisions."

"Okay. Maybe we should just shove this aside and go back to before. Pursuing this isn't really an option, is it?" All he could do was pray she didn't agree. He hoped that God himself would send her some kind of sign that they could make this work. He could make this work and solve crimes with Bones and then go home and make love to her forever and ever, amen.

"Can you do that, Booth? I'm not sure I can. I really enjoyed that kiss, and I think you did too. Maybe we have to go forward before we can go back. Or something." He felt the ground tilt under him; more relieved than he had ever been in his entire life that someone had disagreed with him. He was aware of the risks, but the idea of repressing and denying for the next thirty years until he retired was unbearable.

"No, you're right. We can't go back now. I don't want to, and even if I did, I don't think I could stand missing this chance." He put his hands on her face and leaned in again brushing her lips with his, hoping to be gentle and take his time, but it seemed like she had other plans. She kissed him back, licking into his mouth, and making him shudder under her hot hands. She groaned and he realized that she tasted like everything in his life that ever tasted good before.

He wrapped an arm around her back and pressed her against him wanting to feel every inch of her against every inch of him. That was when he realized she had grabbed onto fistfuls of his shirt and was clinging to him. Everything around him melted into her mouth. Now he had both his arms wrapped around her and he could feel her breasts pressed into his chest. She arched up and swung her right leg over his lap so that now she was sitting on his thighs and moved her arms up to wind around his neck.

They pulled their lips apart after what seemed like decades of kissing. Her lips were swollen and pink from all of his attention. Her fingers were plucking at the buttons on his shirt, wondering what was okay. She was trying to find the right words, any words, but there was so much heat in her that she couldn't speak. He had tasted like everything she had ever read about: nectar, ambrosia, and forbidden fruit. She kissed him again and he pressed her even harder against him, squeezing the air from her lungs and making her dizzy with the pressure and the heat. There was so much need stirring in her she clawed at his shoulders and bit his lip. He rolled with her until she was pinned under him, straining against his weight.

He pushed her shirt up until her stomach was exposed, then her blue bra and then he tugged it up and over her head. She felt his mouth biting kisses down her neck while his hands started to work on his own shirt. She frantically grabbed at the buttons and wound up ripping a couple of them off. Then he was back pressed against her flesh to flesh and she moaned at the sensation of all his heat burning into her body, and then cried out again when she felt his slick tongue on her breast.

His mouth and hands were everywhere, hot on her skin, now soft, now rough, until she was writhing underneath him, hungrier than she had ever been for anyone ever. In the corner of her mind she felt his hands at her waist tugging at the clasp on her skirt.

"Just push it up from the bottom, Booth. Oh _God_, please." She reached her hands to help him slide the skirt up and pull her panties down. Then she fumbled with the button on his fly, her fingers brushing the hardness behind his fly. Then his hands were on hers, pulling them away from his waist and above her head. She moaned in protest as he crossed her wrists and anchored them above her head with one of his hands. He used just enough pressure to secure her hands, but not enough to hurt her. Then she felt his other hand trail across her thigh and under her skirt. He was moving so slow, she thought she might explode until suddenly he was touching her _there_ and his head dipped back down to her mouth.

She writhed under the twin tortures of his mouth and his hand, needing him so much now that she broke away from his kiss and moaned, "Now, now. Do it now. Please, now."

He leaned back for a moment, the hand that was on her leaving for the briefest of moments, until she felt something else pressing against her slick heat. She arched her hips to his, and then he slid slowly inside her, and she lost her mind. She was galvanized by the shock of him so hard inside her, bringing relief and tormenting pleasure at the same time. She began to surge against him, over and over, again and again. She wrapped her legs around him hoping he would never stop and felt the slow creeping pressure drive through her veins. It screamed through her body until she exploded in his arms and her orgasm rocked her all the way to her fingertips. And then she felt him shudder and gasp her name.

They lay sprawled, half-dressed, panting on top of her guest room comforter. He slowly raised up and unhooked the clasp on her skirt and pulled it down her legs. Then he shucked off his pants, underwear, and socks. He lifted up the covers and she scurried into the warmth of his arms.

Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.


End file.
